Bret Harte, born 1836, tried several occupations before he became a writer and a
journalist, and his writing life was full of ups and downs. He became the founding
editor of the Overland Monthly in 1868, some years after being run out of Eureka
California for printing a factual report of a massacre of Indians.

In the early 1870s, Harte was at the top of his
career. It's said he was the highest paid, most-read author of the day. Mark Twain
is quoted as saying " . . though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of
scribblers in this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte."

But his popularity became his undoing and he found
himself unable to produce and compete with other writers of the day. In 1877 he
became a commercial agent in Prussia, and later American Consul in Glasgow, Scotland.
He died 25 years later in London.

While best known for his stories such as The
Luck of Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Harte also wrote
numerous poems, including the wildly popular satire "The Heathen Chinee," which
he called "the worst poem I ever wrote."

Bret
Harte's Christmas story, "Dick Spindler's Family Christmas," was
published in 1894 as a part of Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation.
The entire story is posted here, with our 2001
holiday collection of poems and stories.

Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my
knee,
And drop them books and first pot-hooks, and hear a yarn
from me.
I kin not sling a fair tale of Jinnys fierce and wild,
For I hold it is unchristian to deceive a simple child;
But as from school yer driftin' by, I thowt ye'd like to
hear
Of a "Spelling Bee" at Angels that we organized last year.

It warn't made up of gentle kids, or pretty kids, like you,
But gents ez hed their reg'lar growth, and some enough for
two.
There woz Lanky Jim of Sutter's Fork and Bilson of La-
grange,
And "Pistol Bob," who wore that day a knife by way of
change.
You start, you little kids, you think these are not pretty
names,
But each had a man behind it, and  my name is Truthful
James.

There was Poker Dick from Whisky Flat, and Smith of
Shooter's Bend,
And Brown of Calaveras  which I want no better
friend;
Three-fingered Jack  yes, pretty dears, three
fingers  you have five,
Clapp cut off two  it's sing'lar, too, that Clapp
ain't now
alive.
'T was very wrong indeed, my dears, and Clapp was much
to blame;
Likewise was Jack, in after-years, for shootin' of the same.

The nights was kinder lengthenin' out, the rains had jest
begun,
When all the camp came up to Pete's to have their usual
fun;
But we all sot kinder sad-like around the bar-room stove
Till Smith got up, permiskiss-like, and this remark he hove:
"That's a new game down in Frisco, that ez far ez I can
see
Beats euchre, poker, and van-toon, they calls the 'Spellin'
Bee.'"

Then Brown of Calaveras simply hitched his chair and
spake,
"Poker is good enough for me," and Lanky Jim sez,
"Shake!"
And Bob allowed he warn't proud, but he "must say right
thar
That the man who tackled euchre had his education squar."
This brought up Lenny Fairchild, the schoolmaster, who
said
He knew the game, and he would give instructions on that
head.

"For instance, take some simple word," sez he,
"like
'separate:'
Now who can spll it?" Dog my skin, ef thar was one in
eight.
This set the boys all wild at once. The chairs was put in
row,
And at the head was Lanky Jim, and at the foot was Joe,
And high upon the bar itself the schoolmaster was raised,
And the bar-keep put his glasses down, and sat and silent
gazed.

The first word out was "parallel," and seven let
it be,
Till Joe waltzed in his "double l" betwixt the "a" and
"e;"
For since he drilled them Mexicans in San Jacinto's fight
There warn't no prouder man got up than Pistol Joe that
night 
Till "rhythm" came! He tried to smile, then said "they
had him there."
And Lanky Jim, with one long stride, got up and took his
chair.

O little kids, my pretty kids, 't was touchin' to survey
These bearded men, with weppings on, like schoolboys at
their play.
They'd laugh with glee, and shout to see each other lead
the van,
And Bob sat up as monitor with cue for a rattan,
Till the Chair gave out "incinerate," and Brown said he'd
be durned
If any such blamed word as that in school was ever learned.

When "phthisis" came they all sprang up, and
vowed the
man who rung
Another blamed Greek work on them be taken out and hung.
As they sat down again I saw in Bilson's eye a flash,
And Brown of Calaveras was a-twistin' his moustache,
And when at last Brown slipped on "gneiss," and Bilson
took his chair,
He dropped some casual words about some folks who dyed
their hair.

And then the Chair grew very white, and the Chair said
he'd adjuourn,
But Poker Dick remarked that he would wait and get his
turn;
Then with a tremblin' voice and hand, and with a wanderin'
eye,
The Chair next offered "eider-duck," and Dick began with
"I,"
And Bilson smiled  then Bilson shrieked! Just how the
flight begun
I never knowed, for Bilson dropped, and Dick, he moved
up one.

Then certain gents arose and said "they'd business down
in camp,"
And "ez the road was rather dark, and ez the night was
damp,
They'd " here got up Three-fingered Jack and locked
the door and yelled:
"No, not one mother's son goes out till that thar word is
spelled!"
But while the words were on his lips, he groaned and sank
in pain,
And sank with Webster on his chest and Worcester on his
brain.

Below the bar dodged Poker Dick, and tried to look ez he
Was huntin' up authorities that no one else could see;
And Brown got down behind the stove, allowin' he "was
cold,"
Till it upsot and down his legs the cinders freely rolled,
And several gents called "Order!" till in his simple way,
Poor Smith began with "O-r"  "Or"  and he was
dragged away.

O little kids, my pretty kids, down on your knees and
pray!
You've got your eddication in a peaceful sort of way;
And bear in mind thar may be sharps ez slings their spellin'
square,
But likewise slings their bowie-knives without a thought or
care.
You wants to know the rest, my dears? That's all! In
me you see
The only gent that lived to tell about the Spellin' Bee!

________________________________

He ceased and passed, that truthful man; the children went
their way
With downcast heads and downcast hearts  but not to
sport or play.
For when at eve the lamps was lit, and supperless to bed
Each child was sent, with tasks undone and lessons all un-
said,
No man might know the awful woe that thrilled their
youthful frames,
As they dreamed of Angels Spelling Bee and thought of
Truthful James.

Now shift the blanket pad before your saddle back you
fling,
And draw your cinch up tighter till the sweat drops from
the ring:
We've a dozen miles to cover ere we reach the next divide.
Our limbs are stiffer now than when we first set out to ride,
And worse, the horses know it, and feel the leg-grip tire,
Since in the days when, long ago, we sought the old camp-fire.

Yes, twenty years! Lord! how we'd scent its incense
down the trail,
Through balm of bay and spice and spruce, when eye and ear
would fail,
And word and faint from useless quest we crept, like this,
to rest,
Or, flushed with luck and youthful hope, we rode, like this,
abreast.
Ay, straighen up, old friend, and let the mustang think
he's nigher,
Through looser rein and stirrup strain, the welcome old
camp-fire.

You know the shout that would ring our before us down
the glade,
And start the blue jays like a flight of arrows through the
shade,
And sift the thin pine needles down like slanting, shining
rain,
And send the squirrels scampering back to their holes again,
Until we saw, blue-veiled and dim, or leaping like desire,
That flame of twenty years ago, which lit the old camp-
fire.

And that that rest on Nature's breast, when talk had
dropped, and slow
The night wind went from tree to tree with challenge soft
and low!
We lay on lazy elbows propped, or stood to stir the flame,
Till up the soaring redwood's shaft our shadows danced and
came,
As if to draw us with the sparks, high o'er its unseen spire,
To the five stars that kept their ward above the old camp-
fire, 

Those picket stars whose tranquil watch half soothed, half
shamed our sleep.
What recked we then what beasts or men around might
lurk or creep?
We lay and heard with listless ears the far-off panther's cry,
The near coyote's snarling snap, the grizzly's deep-drawn sigh,
The brown bear's blundering human tread, the gray wolves'
yelping choir
Beyond the magic circle drawn around the old camp-fire.

And then that morn! Was ever morn so filled with all
things new?
The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the
killing blue,
The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's
early call,
The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall,
The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier,
Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's old
camp-fire!

Well, well! we'll see it once again; we should be near it
now;
It's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt
the slough,
And then dip to the Indian Spring, the wooded rise, and 
strange!
Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our
farther range;
And here  what's this? A ragged swale of ruts and
stumps and mire!
Sure this is not the sacred grove that hid the old camp-fire?

Yet here's the "blaze" I cut myself, and there's the
stumbling ledge,
With quartz "outcrop" that lay atop, now leveled to its
edge,
And mounds of moss-grown stumps beside the woodman's
rotting chips,
And gashes in the hillside, that gape with dumb red lips.
And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin, curling higher 
Ah yes!  still lifts the smoke that marked the welcome
old camp-fire!

Perhaps some friend of twenty years still lingers there to
raise
To weary hearts and tired eyes that beacon of old days,
Perhaps  but stay; 't is gone! and yet once more it lifts
as though
To meet our tardy blundering steps, and seems to move, and
lo!
Whirls by us in a rush of sound,  the vanished funeral
pyre
Of hopes and fears that twenty years burned in the old
camp-fire!

For see, beyond the prospect spreads, with chimney, spire,
and roof, 
Two iron bands across the trail clank to our mustang's hoof;
Above them leap two blackened threads from limb-lopped
tree to tree,
To where the whitewashed station speeds it message to the
sea.
Rein in! Rein in! the quest is o'er. The goal of our
desire
Is but the train whose track has lain across the old camp-
fire.

Cicely says you're a poet; maybe,  I ain't much on
rhyme:
I'd reckon you'd give a hundred, and beat me every
time.
Poetry!  that's the way some chaps put up an idee,
But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that's
what's the matter with me.

Poetry!  just look round you,  alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain't it a pretty page!
Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this 'yer station the only thing moves
in sight.

Poetry!  Well now  Polly! Polly, run to your mam;
Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Ain't she a lamb?
Poetry!  that reminds me o; suthin' right in that suit:
Jest shet that door thar, will yer?  for Cicely's ears is
cute.

Ye noticed Polly,  the baby? A month afore she was
born,
Cicely  my old woman  was moodly-like and forlorn;
Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and
trees;
Family man yourself, sir? Well you know what a woman
be's.

Nervous she was, and restless  said that she "could n't
stay."
Stay!  and the nearest woman seventeen miles away.
But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be
on hand,
And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o'
land.

One night,  the tenth of October,  I woke with a chill
and a fright,
For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in
sight.
But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that
she "could n't stay,"
But had gone to visit her neighbor,  seventeen miles
away!

When and how she stampeded, I did n't wait for to see,
For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she;
Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is
off the scent,
For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the
way she went.

I've had some mighty mean moments afore I ken to this
spot, 
Lost on the Plains in '50, drowned almost and shot;
But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife,
Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.

"Cicely ! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath,
And "Cicely!" came from the canyon,  and all was as
still as death.
And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below,
And just but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them
peaks of snow.

I ain't what you call religious  but I just looked up to
the sky,
And  this 'yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think
I lie:
But up away to east'ard, yaller and big and far,
I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star.

Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me:
Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see:
Big and yaller and dancing,  I never saw such a star,
And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went
for it then and thar.

Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead,
Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led.
It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and
nigh,
Our of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby's cry.

Listen! thar's the same music; but her lungs they are
stronger now
Thank the day I packed her and her mother,  I'm derned
if I jest know how.
But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o' the
whole thing is
That Cis never knew what happened from that very night
to this.

But Cicely says you're a poet, and maybe you might, some
day,
Jest sling her a rhyme 'bout a baby that was born in a
curious way,
And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of
the star, don't tell
As how 't was the doctor's lantern,  for maybe 't won't
sound so well.

It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr.
Cutter
for remarks he heard him utter in debate upon the
floor,
Swung him up into the skylight, in the peaceful, pensive
twilight, and then keerlessly proceeded, makin no
account what we did 
To wipe up with his person casual dust upon the floor.

Now a square fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness up-
sets me, but the simple thing that gets me---now
the job is done and gone,

And weve come home free and merry from the peaceful
cemetery, leavin Cutter there with Sutter --- that
mebbee just a stutter
On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the loss we deeply mourn.

Some bashful hesitation, just like spellin punctooation

might have worked an aggravation on to Sutters
mournful mind,
For the witnesses all vary ez to wot was said and nary
a galoot will toot his horn except the way he is
inclined.

But they all allow that Sutter had begun a kind of mutter,
when uprose Mr. Cutter with a sickening kind of
ease,
And proceeded then to wade in to the subject then pre-
vadin: "Is Profanity degradin?" in words like
unto these:

"Onlike the previous speaker, Mr. Sutter of Yreka, he was
but a humble seeker  and not like him  a
cuss"
It was here that Mr. Sutter softly reached for Mr. Cutter,
when the latter with a stutter said: "ac-customed
to discuss."

Then Sutter he rose grimly, and sorter smilin dimly bowed
onto the Chairman primly  (just like Cutter
ez
could be!)
Drawled "he guessed he must fall  back as  Mr.
Cutter owned the pack  as  he just had played
the  Jack 
as " (here Cutters gun went crack!
as Mr. Sutter gasped and ended) "every man can
see!"

But William Henry Pryor  just in range of Sutters
fire
here evinced a wild desire to do somebody
harm,
And in the general scrimmage no one thought if Sutters
"image" was a misplaced punctooation  like the
hole in Pryors arm.

For we all waltzed in together, never carin to ask whether
it was Sutter or was Cutter we woz tryin to abate.
But we couldnt help perceivin, when we took to inkstand
heavin, that the process was relievin to the sharp-
ness of debate.

So weve come home free and merry from the peaceful
cemetery, and I make no comentary on these simple
childish games;
Things is various and human  and the man
aint born of
woman who is free to intermeddle with his pals
intents and aims.

Surprisingly few Harte books are in print. Any good
library or used bookstore should have many. Our favorite poetry collection is The
Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte. image. We'll probably see you over there, as we seem to be addicted to books
at the Bar-D. Come on back now.

The ever-excellent,
Literary History of the American West (published by Texas
Christian University Press) is now available, complete, in a
searchable and printable PDF
file of about 1500 pages. It has a piece about Bret Harte and Mark
Twain and has many other references to Harte.